“Guardian Hammer is pretty nice, but in 90% of my PvE runs I’d rather not have a light field destroying my teams ability to stack might/heals. Different experiences of PvE I guess.”
Wait. The light field messes up other people stacking might/heals? How?
If you are constantly spamming light fields, then people will find it hard to proc might from fire fields, or healing from water fields etc. Since the retaliation you get from blasting a light field is comparatively useless, it annoys alot of people.
Instant cast, unfortunately, probably won’t happen. Anet doesn’t want a heal that can’t be interrupted, and the next patch looks to be reducing the cast by 1/4 of a second – implying that they realize that the casting time is too much, but that they don’t want to remove it entirely.
But it can definitely be interrupted with immobalize, evade, block, invuln, knockdown, pull, fear, stun and simply being run away from – if you do no damage you get no healing – that is its counter. IMHO it doesn’t need to be interruptible during cast as well. ( I’m ignoring the Monk’s Focus effect since it does require a grandmaster trait and the heal itself is relatively small )
The 10 second ICD would account for a bit. When you combine all three traits, however, you basically spam burning around your character every 3 hits. The hope was that the combination would grant AoE boon removal. In practice, only one boon is removed (total), even if burning is applied to multiple foes around the player (instead of one boon removed per burned target).
Yup, it’s very likely the boon removal ICD is handled globally ( just like similar sigil/rune effects ), so the first time it triggers it’s on cooldown regardless of how many AoE hits you get
Been toying around with some new builds. Radiance V “Searing Flames” seems to have an internal cooldown that I haven’t been able to pinpoint. It also does not function as you might expect when combined with Virtues VIII and Virtues XI.
Supreme Justice does allow you to apply burning faster. This highlights that either the Searing Flames internal cooldown is possibly longer than 10 seconds, or the combination of the two doesn’t work.
Permeating Wrath does apply the area Burn and does work with Supreme Justice (procs on hit 3 instead of hit 5), but does not consistently remove boons from enemies around the player as expected when combined with Searing Flames. This was tested in a 3-on-1 situation, with no pulsing AoE boons activated.
More testing needed, but that’s what I got so far.
Searing Flames does indeed have a 10 second ICD, and what is more it’s activated regardless of whether boons are removed – so basically from the first moment you apply burning – could this explain the behaviour you are seeing?
If the target dies before the third hit and the third hit lands it places SoP, as it should be.
What happens next is the bug. If you press the chain again you will place a second SoP and also get double damage from dual ticks and double uptime on protection from the symbol.
Nice find.. I’ve not seen that happen on the hammer, but it sounds a lot like what happens with the sword auto-attack, which repeats on the third step ( mentioned a few posts up ) – I thought it was just the projectiles bugging out, but perhaps it applies to all weapons
Ok after some testing with the Thief NPC in the Mists, I think I can safely say the order removal priority is:
Runes of the Soldier
Pure of Voice
So you are correct – I will update the FAQ entry shortly. Good find!
I can’t confirm the order of Save Yourselves without an ally to test it on, but I will assume the Wiki is correct in this case.
A lot of general confusion on the web seems to stem from the fact that there is no order to condition removal ( people assume it’s first in first off, or last in and last off when it is actually random ( or some obscure priority system ) )
Q21 If I have Pure of Voice traited with Runes of the Soldier and use “Save Yourselves!” in what order do these remove and convert conditions.
First to trigger is Pure of Voice which will remove the first most recent condition from yourself and allies and grant acorresponding boonto the players that were cured.
The 6th Rune of the Soldier will then remove the next most recent condition from yourself and allies.
Finally “Save Yourselves!” will strip remaining conditions from allies in range and stack them onto yourself, additionally granting you all 7 [yellow icon] boons.
I read the GW2 wiki, which agrees with this, but I’ve been testing it myself and I believe the 6th Soldier Rune actually triggers first.
If Pure of Voice triggered first, it makes sense that you’d receive the corresponding boon as long as you’re afflicted with even a single condition, right? That’s not the case, in my experience. (I tested it with and without the 6th Soldier Rune just to be sure.) As soon as you have two conditions everything works as expected, though.
I wondered if I’m just missing something from the explanations I’ve read or if others have noticed the same thing?
Your observations could well be correct – I last tested this months ago, and PoV has been patched a few times since then, so it’ll definitely be worth retesting to make sure. I’ll try and devote some time to it soon ( or perhaps someone else has made note of the priority )
If your group is hitting 25 stacks of might without Inspired Virtues then you could well cause a slight issue ( since virtues 5 only applies 5 seconds, whilst blast finishers are 20 and For Great Justice is 25 ).
If that’s the case you’ll either have to change your build or the way your party applies its stacks ( or just live with the fact some of it will be short-lived ). For multiple enemies where you can spam F1, it probably isn’t much of an issue.
The guardians sword main auto 3 “sword wave” has some unusual behaviour when attacking certain statics. It does not connect at all with the static does no damage and the guardian will continue spamming the third strike until the skill times out.
Yeah that should probably get a mention – it’s been an issue forever. The third attack is actually a projectile attack which is why it behaves oddly sometimes and can easily get obstructed, or worse, reflected back in your face.
You may find this interesting: Guardian Mobility Table ( you can ignore the “current system” row because it’s no longer in the game )
A meditation sword/gs guard is pretty quick around the battle field. You’ll never be as quick as a GS warrior (what profession is though?) and can be extremely slow if you find yourself with no ambient creatures/enemies to target for teleport. Traveler and Speed runes can help a great deal if you can make them gel with your build.
A support oriented guardian has to rely on the boon duration stats and staff to get maximum swiftness uptime.
It should take around 80% boon duration to get 100% swiftness uptime from the staff, provided you receive 2 ticks per cast. You can get away with lower if you suppliment it with shouts ( “retreat!”, “save yourselves!” )
Here’s a comprehensive Guide to Guardian Burning which was stickied in this subforum for a long time until the devs decided guardian condition damage was something they wanted to quietly sweep under the carpet. It has a lot of useful information.
Generally, in WvW, the biggest issue with our condition damage is our lack of cover conditions. If we had better access to secondary effects like bleed or chill we’d be a lot more viable.
I really like the shield in WvW roaming – on-demand interrupts, healing, absorption and protection are always useful on a medi build and I find people are wiser to the focus and torch burst ( especially since it’s well telegraphed ).
Those silly mix-n-match rune guardians won’t be able to stack boon duration easily to that amount anymore. I only run a +5% boon duration build, just for the Inspired Virtue trait.
Actually the individual boon durations supposedly got buffed. :>
That’s just some legerdemain from the propaganda department. What this probably means is that runes like Monk with + 15% duration on the second slot ( so 2+2+2 gives 45% total ) will have the bonus increased to + 30% on the 4th slot ( so you get + 30% max regardless of rune combination – 4+2 probably won’t give you anything meaningful stats-wise )
Dang 30% is still too much for (4) if the (5) and (6) bonuses are gonna be better. Can I get the source pls?
30% was just an example – I just wanted to illustrate that I think it’s fairly unlikely anet will buff 6 rune sets so they offer better stats than the 2+2+2s we enjoy at the moment.
Remember the Rune of the Monk’s 6th bonus is “grants aegis whenever you use an elite”.
So far we’ve had no indication that those fairly useless effects will be removed and replaced with additional stats bonuses
Those silly mix-n-match rune guardians won’t be able to stack boon duration easily to that amount anymore. I only run a +5% boon duration build, just for the Inspired Virtue trait.
Actually the individual boon durations supposedly got buffed. :>
That’s just some legerdemain from the propaganda department. What this probably means is that runes like Monk with + 15% duration on the second slot ( so 2+2+2 gives 45% total ) will have the bonus increased to + 30% on the 4th slot ( so you get + 30% max regardless of rune combination – 4+2 probably won’t give you anything meaningful stats-wise )
I’m not too worried about the crit change – the guardian has almost always been about damage modifiers rather than excessively high crit damage stacking – those won’t change with this patch. One would hope that it will hit other classes harder…
Although the vigor nerf will have some impact, I think the double sigil and icd changes is a big plus ( yay! I can have hydromancy AND energy, intelligence and battle … force and night? )
I’ve still been stubbornly experimenting with Litany of Wrath in WvW skirmishing, and a reduced cast time will be most welcome ( although I still think it should be instant cast )
I suspect we might see a nerf to boon duration since 2+2+2 rune set combinations will no longer work ( or the 3+3 healway? ). If that’s the cast I think it’s a little bit of a shame they are discouraging rune mixes which gave builds a tiny bit of extra depth and variety.
I seem to remember running the numbers once – if traited for, and given every buff in the game the scepter has a theoretical max damage of about 75k against a 2600 armoured target if all the projectiles strike (vary rare).
As a comparison the GS skill Whirling Wrath can hit for about 56k in the same setup.
Of course, you actually have to stand still in the circle for several seconds in order to get clobbered, so as other’s have commented you may have had an unlucky lag spike.
Depending on what part of the game you are playing:
if a target is moving try to get slightly ahead of it and move with it – if you chase its coat tails you will miss with most of the projectiles. Stationary mobs might have odd mesh shapes, and it can be hard to workout exactly where the centre is.
You can combine the whirl with a teleport ( start casting whirl and JI to target ) or CC to help keep the enemy in range ( GS#5 to pull, knockdowns/immobalize/wards etc ).
Sigil of Hydromancy can help for slowing an enemy and stopping them from kiting out of range too quickly.
WvW depends, as ever, entirely on the matchup and tier of your server.
In the mid tier you can have a lot of fun roaming although there are definitely certain profession/builds that are nigh impossible to counter currently ( like PU mesmer and the usual engi and necro culprits ).
I don’t think much if anything has changed from a Healway perspective – but as others have said, the meditation route is a bit more fun that in used to be ( and could have been great if they hadn’t screwed up the new heal skill )
I’ve seen ALOT more roaming/DPS guardians since MF was changed and traveller/speed runes became useful ( On my current server it often felt like I was the only one until after the patch ).
Alright to be more specific. I suppose i’m speaking more in terms of WvW and I guess eventually sPvP(For Burst). I have a Warrior at 79 and Guardian currently at 72. I’m gonna need to start focusing on one of them first and just don’t want to regret which I pick. So figure for PvP I’d want to have good burst and not be complete glass.
In the great scheme of things it probably won’t hurt you to get both to 80 and have fun playing with both depending on your mood/need
You have 25 might stacks from team buffs.
You have glass cannon traits.
You are fighting a mob that has low toughness.
The mob has 25 stacks of vulnerability.
You have empower allies buff from warrior.
You have banner of strength and discipline from warrior.
So basically you are getting 875 + 150 + 170 = 1190 additional power,170 precision and 15% crit damage from team might buffs, team traits, and banners.
We don’t have empower allies.
There was 2 empower buffs..the grey boxes,with the white circle is empower.
Also,you had ranger spirit 10% dmg buff.
Too bad you couldnt have WvW buffs tho,thatd be quite interesting to see.
More likely it was 1x Empower Allies + 1x Spotter ( the grey icons ) and 2x Frost Spirit ( the blue, traited and untraited )
I was referring to regular guild runs versus alpha as someone mentioned earlier. I’m not in this video. But yeah, they probably did run EA for this vid to get peak numbers.
You have 25 might stacks from team buffs.
You have glass cannon traits.
You are fighting a mob that has low toughness.
The mob has 25 stacks of vulnerability.
You have empower allies buff from warrior.
You have banner of strength and discipline from warrior.
So basically you are getting 875 + 150 + 170 = 1190 additional power,170 precision and 15% crit damage from team might buffs, team traits, and banners.
We don’t have empower allies.
There was 2 empower buffs..the grey boxes,with the white circle is empower.
Also,you had ranger spirit 10% dmg buff.
Too bad you couldnt have WvW buffs tho,thatd be quite interesting to see.
More likely it was 1x Empower Allies + 1x Spotter ( the grey icons ) and 2x Frost Spirit ( the blue, traited and untraited )
Yup – all damage modifiers stack multiplicatively. ( Fiery Wrath, Radiant Power, Unscathed Contender, Elusive Power and Power of the Virtuous + all weapon specific traits )
This is the reason current best guardian dps builds don’t trait into Zeal beyond Fiery Wrath, but try and get access to as many modifiers as possible.
Applied Fortitude and Guard Leech are stacking boons you gain in WvW for killing camp guards/sentries/lords etc. ( max 5 stacks; up to 250 bonus vitality and 100 power respectively )
In WvW you gain WXP ( World Experience ) which periodically awards you rank points which you can spend for different benefits regardless of your profession. You can get access to the above 2 boons by spending 115 rank points in both: Defense Against Guards and Guard Killer categories.
You lose the bonus when you are downed or you switch maps
and then the table at the bottom which shows all the sigils and their relevant cooldowns.
The main issue is combining an on-crit sigil with an on-swap – since the crit can occur at any-time it can interfere with the swap effect so that it doesn’t proc.
Generally having 2 on-swap sigils on different sets are ok because their cooldowns will always expire by the time you are ready/able to swap weapons ( some professions have shorter swap timers which can cause additional trouble, but the guardian is the king of long CDs so it’s not a problem )
However, you said you have energy on your focus, and as that is an on-swap you can’t put another on-swap/on-crit on the main hand weapon (scepter) because the cooldowns will interfere – so you might want to consider a straight stats booster ( force/ accuracy etc ) or on-kill effect with restoration, speed or stamina for even more dodge capability
I use speed runes for golem driving, where the extra vita is useful… But i don’t find them particularly useful for actual combat. if i was to have swiftness in a roaming build I’d use traveler purely for the crit damage and boon duration
20% is just too low to make it a viable alternative to the others,
for raw healing you can’t beat the signet,
8-9k heal on a 32 second CD (with signet recharge trait)
in order for Litany to heal for similar numbers you’d need to deal 35,000 damage in the next 6 seconds…
something needs to change, either make the buff last for a meaningful duration (15-20s) or make the healing 40-50%.
I’d say the conversion amount and the cooldown is about right – there is only 18 seconds of downtime for the skill, and it’s pretty easy to generate 35k of damage in 6 seconds as a dedicated DPS guardian.
Are we talking about the same thing here? This is a tpvp discussion. Are your really telling me you routinely do 35k worth of damage on demand (and that has what it has got to be for the heal to be worthwhile) in a six second time frame in tpvp against people that are good? I call shenanigans. Never mind the fact you can count on one hand the number of dps guardians at the top level of any pvp soloq or team arena precisely because what you are claiming to do easily is so hard to do. The heal is junk plain and simple and you sound like a theory crafter pulling optimal burst numbers that are insanely difficult to pull off except against training golems and pve targets.
No, you are quite right, I have been following the thread over the past few days and had managed to forget the spvp focus. Apologies for the confusion
It might have been more interesting as a signet style heal on damage passive effect which is put on cooldown when a mediocre passive heal is activated
20% is just too low to make it a viable alternative to the others,
for raw healing you can’t beat the signet,
8-9k heal on a 32 second CD (with signet recharge trait)
in order for Litany to heal for similar numbers you’d need to deal 35,000 damage in the next 6 seconds…
something needs to change, either make the buff last for a meaningful duration (15-20s) or make the healing 40-50%.
I’d say the conversion amount and the cooldown is about right – there is only 18 seconds of downtime for the skill, and it’s pretty easy to generate 35k of damage in 6 seconds as a dedicated DPS guardian.
Also I don’t really see an issue having a heal that only works for a limited set of builds ( because it was supposed to encourage a certain style of play ), but as it stands it doesn’t work for any builds at all.
0-cast time would help a little bit ( allowing you to activate when you see you have a good chance of getting reasonable damage numbers ), but it still would not fix the Guard’s underlying deficiency in the soft CC department. If it proc’d a static field on cast it might just be viable…lol
First off, shelter can be interrupted, and if it does, it goes on full cool down, with 0 healing. the only other heal I know of that does this is ether renewal, also possibly mirror, though I never tested that. Second, I never once said that the reason shelter is better than litany is because it can be interrupted, I said it is because it requires us to be on the target for 100% of the duration to even be worth it. For most guardians, that is almost impossible, as we lack soft CC to keep people near us. The issue is that there are SO MANY ways to counter litany, while most healing skills you don’t have to worry about immobilize, or cripple, or chill, or just flat out being kited.
This. Whilst roaming it’s pretty rare to find a opponent that is skilled enough and lucky enough with CDs to interrupt a heal, and in a group you’ll most likely have stability.
However, with Litany it’s a very regular occurrence to have your targets kite/blink/evade/blind/block/invuln out of your damage area leaving you with a lot less health than when you started.
You can trait into valor to make just another medi-heal, but ideally it should be a heal that allows you to forego MF+FM and let you spend those points elsewhere ( ie increase build variety )
Q20 Do boons that I receive through trait effects ( like the Retaliation you get from Wrathful Spirit ) count towards Altruistic Healing?
Yes! Generally any boons you receive ( specifically: boons which have a yellow icon, not those gained from passive effects like Strength In Numbers or Battle Presence ), >will trigger Altruistic Healing, not matter what their source<
(but not for ‘Contemplation Of Purity’?)
Thanks, I’ll amend that entry once I get a chance to test other boon conversion effects in the mists
